


That’s Not Who I Am (Anymore)

by FlannelGuy51



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: (I don’t ship it ew), (I wanted to include more but it didn’t really work), Angst, Brienne of Tarth is the Best, Canon Compliant, Coming Out, Gen, Gender Dysphoria, I needed this fic so I wrote it, Implied Cersei Lannister/Jaime Lannister, Implied Jaime Lannister/Brienne of Tarth, Jaime Lannister Has Issues, Jaime Lannister Needs a Hug, Jaime Lannister is Trans, Trans Character, Trans Jaime Lannister, Trans Male Character, Trans Man Jaime Lannister, Tywin Lannister Being Tywin Lannister, Tywin Lannister's A+ Parenting, Where is the trans Jaime content in this world?, and Brienne doesn’t mind
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-18
Updated: 2020-06-18
Packaged: 2021-03-04 07:14:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,046
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24779734
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FlannelGuy51/pseuds/FlannelGuy51
Summary: Brienne of Tarth has absolutely no idea why Jaime Lannister, the Kingslayer, would save her from Locke and his men. After all, he’s been through little hardship in his life, so why should he have any compassion for a woman’s point of view? Right? Maybe he understands better than she thinks.OR: Jaime is trans and Brienne is the first person he’s ever trusted enough to come out to.
Relationships: Jaime Lannister & Brienne of Tarth
Comments: 10
Kudos: 42





	That’s Not Who I Am (Anymore)

**Author's Note:**

> Trigger Warnings: transphobia/hurtful comments (from Tywin and Cersei), gender dysphoria, some language about trans bodies that may be triggering.

The fire crackled between them, practically about to go out. They were on the far side of camp, a place where they couldn’t hear Locke’s plans for the morrow. Guards were assigned to watch them in shifts throughout the night, standing watch for three hours before switching out. The current guard was about an hour in, and he was fast asleep with wine in hand. Everyone in camp was asleep, for a matter of fact. Everyone—except for Brienne and Jaime.

He was bent over, almost touching the ground with no sign that he would be pushing himself back up any time soon. Jaime’s wrist throbbed. It still felt almost as if there was still a hand there, struggling to inch away from the pain. He had to look at it every once in a while to remind himself that his right hand was gone, and he wasn’t getting it back.

“Eat.”

Jaime struggled not to jump at the word. Neither he nor Brienne had spoken to each other since it had happened. Since his hand was taken. A part of him yearned to speak, to take his mind off his losses and just talk for a while. The larger part of Jaime won out, though, and he managed to look nonchalant at her comment. He just kept looking into the fire.

Brienne sighed. “What are you doing?”

“I’m dying,” Jaime replied, not meeting her eyes.

“You’re not dying,” Brienne said with disgust. “You need to live. To take revenge.”

“I don’t care about revenge.” It was true: he didn’t. Jaime’s whole life had felt as if it was one long plot for revenge. His sister and father’s revenge against his brother, the Starks’ revenge against his family, his own feelings of “revenge” against Jon Arryn. He was sick of it. He didn’t want a part in it anymore.

“Coward!” Brienne exclaimed. “One misfortune and you’re giving up.”

_ How could she know?  _ he thought.  _ No one knows.  _ “Misfor-” Jaime began, pausing to take a breath, “Misfortune?”

“You lost your  _ hand. _ ”

Jaime looked up at her at last. “My swordhand,” Jaime said, trying not to sound desperate. “I  _ was  _ that hand.”

Brienne scoffed. “You have a taste... _ one  _ taste of the real world, where people have important things taken from them, and you whine and cry and quit!”

Jaime couldn’t bring himself to speak. No one had ever said anything like that to him before.

“You sound like a bloody _ woman!” _

Now that, he’d heard. A shiver of something Jaime hadn’t felt in a long time crawled up his spine and he suddenly felt dizzy. He wanted to jump out of his skin, run away from Brienne and Locke and this camp and into the night. But he couldn’t.

So he ate.

Jaime reached out his left hand, practically flailing, and grabbed one of the burnt ends of bread the soldiers had given him. He bit off a chunk of it savagely and breathed, in and out, closing his eyes.  _ Don’t think about it, don’t think about it, don’t think about it.  _ He couldn’t seem to stop the word from echoing through his head.

They sat like that for a while longer, Jaime eating his bread and trying not to panic and Brienne staring into the fire lost in thought. It was her that broke the silence again.

“I know what you did for me,” Brienne said quietly. “You told them Tarth is full of sapphires. It’s called the Sapphire Isle because of the blue of its water. You knew that.”

Jaime set his bread down. He wanted to put his head in his hands, look away, do something, but all he could do was look at her. Into her sapphire eyes.

“Why did you help me?”

Jaime sighed. The feeling was beginning to crawl up his neck, and he shivered, breaking eye contact with Brienne. “I’m not a woman,” Jaime said icily. “Anymore.” The moment he said it he wanted to take it back. What had he done? He was tired,  _ delirious  _ surely.

“What?” Brienne asked, her tone full of disbelief.

Well, he had always been the reckless Lannister. “I was one, once.” He met Brienne’s eyes, daring to hope.

But she broke eye contact and scoffed, lying down. “Like hells you were. Goodnight, Kingslayer.”

“Jaime,” Jaime said. “The name was...as  _ far  _ from what I had been called as I could get it. Out of a story my mother had told me, actually. It was about a simple lad, a boy that wanted to ride dragons and become the best swordsman in the Seven Kingdoms. And he did.” Jaime found himself smiling. “My mother always loved to tell us stories.”

Brienne hadn’t said anything yet, but he knew she was listening. She was looking up at the stars, examining the constellations in the sky. Jaime took it as a sign to continue.

“When we were children, Cersei and I, we were completely identical. No one could tell us apart, even our own parents. And much less the castle servants. Both of us had the same responsibilities. Learn to sew, learn to dance, learn to sing, all of that  _ shit.  _ But the servants couldn’t teach us at the same time, you see, because we would just talk and talk and never get anything done. So we developed this system, when we were very young. If either one of us wanted the day off, we would simply ask the other one to take our place. So long as we dressed the same as the other during their lesson, no one would ever know the difference.

“I used this system much more than Cersei, I’ll admit,” Jaime laughed. “Whenever she would want me to take her place in class, I would—as you say— _ whine _ and  _ cry _ until she gave in. I couldn’t  _ stand  _ wearing her dresses. Every time we went off to the keep of some high lord I threw a fit. Gods help the servants asked to force me into looking pretty.”

Jaime shivered at the memories that flooded his brain. Cersei had come back early from her excursion one day, seen him sewing during her lesson as she walked to her chambers.

_ “You’re so beautiful,” _ she had said. When he’d asked her not to say that, she’d practically slapped him.  _ “You  _ are _ beautiful. Nothing you say or want me to say will ever change that.” _

Jaime cleared his throat, shaking his head. He turned his head up to look at the stars. “Anyway. One day, I asked Cersei to take my place at lessons. She agreed, of course, and I remember I paid off this servant boy to let me borrow his clothes. He was more than happy to accept my own linens in exchange, and I was off. I rubbed some mud on my face on the way, trying to look like I fit in. And I ran until I was far enough away from my father that no one would recognize me straight away. And then I found some boys, just common boys, playing at knights and I asked to join them. They told me of course I could, asked for my name, and I told them Jaime. They never learned any better. They just called me Jaime. We played that  _ whole  _ day, right up till sundown, with sticks as swords pretending we could ride horses and dragons. It was...the best day of my life, up to that point.

“But when I came home…” Jaime released a breath he hadn’t known he’d been holding. “Everything changed. It was past supper by that time, and the game was up. Cersei was not pleased that I’d made everyone aware of our little exchange to skip lessons. Father was furious. He yelled for what felt like hours. ‘This is not how a lady behaves, rubbing dirt on her face and playing in the village like a common swine! You are a  _ Lannister!  _ You dishonor this family!’ And I just…”

Jaime looked away from the sky. Brienne was staring at him, mouth gaping, now sitting up to hear him better. He gave her a weak smile before staring at the ground.

“I couldn’t stand it anymore. It all came  _ rushing  _ out of me, that I was a boy and not a girl, I wasn’t like Cersei, we weren’t the same. This was practically unheard of, as you well know, and even if it happened, it was never expected to happen in a...family like mine. And so my father did everything in his power to get it out of me. Made me attend double the lessons, burned my boyish clothes, saw that only female servants saw to me. Cersei did practically the same. She insisted that we were twins,  _ sisters _ , identical in ever way. Told me that I was exactly like her: a beautiful girl.

“All of this until Tyrion was born, and Mother died. Father saw that his male heir was...well, not what he  _ wanted  _ in a male heir. And so at last, as I wept for the loss of my mother and through the misery of how I couldn’t be who I knew I was, Father came to me. He told me that from that day forward, I was Jaime Lannister. No one would say anything different.” Jaime started to rub his hand up and down his leg, anxious. He could practically feel his father breathing down his neck. “So I became the son he’d always wanted. He would work me hard with the swords, asking me if I was a man or the little girl I’d been born. That sword became me, my proof to the world that I was a  _ man,  _ that I’d earned it. Father made sure no one would ever hear of the circumstances of my birth, of course. Sending out threats to anyone who could’ve known, telling them that if anyone dared speak that Jaime Lannister had been born a...a whimpering  _ girl,  _ their head would end up at Casterly Rock.”

Jaime sighed, looking at Brienne with a wry smile. “Not that anyone really  _ cared,  _ because they could whisper about it behind my back. I have a great number of names whispered behind my back, now. Kingslayer, Oathbreaker, and...Lioness. How Cersei is more man than I am, how I just managed to fuck my way to the top of the Kingsguard with the thing between my legs, and—”

Suddenly Jaime’s voice broke. His eyes felt wet. He hurried to swipe at them with the one hand he had left, praying to the gods that Brienne did not see. If she did, she said nothing, and he was thankful for that. At last, Jaime met Brienne’s eyes again. She looked at him like he was a wounded animal. He hurried to look away. “Well, there’s more than one reason why I’ve only slept with Cersei,” Jaime said, trying to laugh. It didn’t work very well. “Anyway. The idea of being, um,  _ taken advantage of,  _ like they were going to do to you, I just...I couldn’t…”

“Thank you,” Brienne said suddenly. Jaime looked up at her again, saw the wetness in her eyes to match his own. “I know what it cost you, now.”

Jaime squirmed a bit. No one had thanked him in quite a long time. “Don’t mention it.”

Silence fell between them again.

“I never…” Brienne started, “I never knew that you really were…”

“Get some sleep,” Jaime cut her off. He laid down himself, settling in the dirt and staring up at the stars. “You’re going to need it.”

Jaime heard her lie down and started to close his eyes.

“Kingsla—Jaime.”

Jaime held in a breath. “Yes?”

“I don’t mind.”

He knew that that probably wasn’t what she had meant to say, what she had wanted to say, but it was enough. Jaime didn’t know how to tell her what that meant to him. He didn’t know how to tell her that Tyrion was the only person who’d ever said anything like that to him. He didn’t know how to tell her that she was the only non-Lannister he’d ever trusted enough to tell.

So he just said, “Thanks.”

Jaime could hear the smile in Brienne’s voice when she said, “Don’t mention it.”

  
  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading! If you enjoyed and want more trans Jaime content, please let me know. I plan to deliver regardless. Happy pride!


End file.
